Abstract
While travelling on public transport in Paris recently, I witnessed several encounters with rudeness: people talking loudly on their cellphones, being pushed at the doors of the metro, and having one’s possessions touched. While those using public transport on a regular basis are accustomed to such acts, I was taken aback by their prevalence and my emotional reaction. I immediately began to ponder the subjective reality of incivility in everyday life; why hadn’t I noticed these acts before? How did I really feel about these acts? What is the ‘appropriate’ reaction to such an infraction? Was the behaviour intentional? Incivility by Smith, Phillips and King attempts to answer these questions and offers an in-depth sociological account of uncivil acts in everyday life. Throughout this book, incivility is viewed as a sociological experience taking place in a variety of environments. Smith and colleagues argue that acts of incivility are not confined to criminogenic environments such as the ghetto and deprived housing projects but rather regularly occur in non-violent, non-threatening public spaces (e.g. supermarket, the outdoors, public transport).
Existing research on incivility is limited in scope, focusing almost exclusively on the criminological agenda (particularly the ‘broken windows’ theory where small acts of incivility lead to major crimes), thereby circumventing low-level rudeness and fleeting encounters with strangers. In this way, incivility is portrayed as infrequent and associated with a particular group of people or way of life. Smith and colleagues brilliantly illustrate that the experience of incivility is shared and complex, requiring a sophisticated analysis to unpack the subjective and objective interpretations of rude encounters. The strength of this book lies in its careful examination of incivility as an everyday occurrence.
This book is divided into eight chapters with the first and last serving as conceptual chapters; the first chapter provides an introduction to the reader while the last chapter allows the reader to reflect on the arguments presented. Chapters two through seven are data analysis chapters and offer the core information and main arguments of the book. Additionally, statistical analyses increase in difficulty as the book goes on, starting with simple descriptive information leading to logistic regression. The main body of the book examines the fundamentals of incivility: when are acts of incivility more likely to take place? What emotions are related to encounters with rude strangers? What are the risk factors associated with incivility? Do victims of rude encounters engage in coping mechanisms? And what are the general attitudes towards the rude stranger? At the end of each chapter, the main findings are presented in bullet point style; these are helpful as they help situate the main arguments of the chapter. Each chapter is well developed and progresses nicely through a variety of engaging issues. The large number of statistical tables provides a more holistic understanding of the issues at play; however, the analyses are quite complex and may be difficult for the non-statistician to understand.
A work of this magnitude and scope is bound to have gaps and problems. Although chapters are well developed and highlight a number of interesting issues, the authors occasionally examine a particular issue but fail to provide an adequate response, thereby ending the chapter abruptly. This leaves the reader to ponder the question on their own. For instance, chapter four examines emotions and sequences. At the end of the chapter, the authors discuss the emotions of fear and anger and explain how emotions felt at the time of the event drive sustained encounters of incivility. They discuss these emotions in relation to four behavioural responses. The authors then ask: ‘What are we to make of this?’ (p. 80). In the preceding section, the authors discussed a number of findings; as such it is difficult to decipher which issue the authors are addressing. Furthermore, Smith and colleagues respond to the question by discussing Randall Collins’s theory of interaction ritual. After carefully reading this section several times, I failed to make the connection between the emotions and sequences and Collins’s theory. To that end, this section leaves the reader disconnected from the general arguments of the chapter.
Nevertheless, this book offers a variety of interesting and compelling discussions of encounters with rudeness. One of the most interesting discussions takes place in chapter three when the authors discuss everyday incivility. Smith and colleagues state:
Common sense tells us that to explain rudeness we need to come up with an explanation for the existence of the ‘rude people’ who do rude things. . . . What allows a rude encounter to take place has to be a coming together of an offender and a victim, perhaps on a bus ride. (p. 42)
This quotation brilliantly defines how incivility is a common occurrence that can happen anywhere when two people are in the surrounding environment. The chapter goes on to discuss how acts of incivility are everyday occurrences happening in a variety of common settings and clustered at particular times of the day, most prominently during daylight hours. After acquiring this knowledge, I began to pay more attention to my own interaction with rude strangers, noticing how my encounters also took place during daylight hours, especially between 11:00 am and 2:00 pm – as suggested by Smith and colleagues. While chapter three describes the very mundane details of encounters with rude strangers, it simultaneously allows the reader to participate in the research and undertake their own experiment with routine acts of incivility. In this way, it allows the reader to become intimately connected to the research and encourages introspection into one’s thoughts about incivility. One may begin to question how they feel about encounters with rude strangers and what, if any, action they would take when confronted with rudeness. The variety of responses to incivility discussed by the authors may also indirectly shape one’s behaviour by attempting to refrain from engaging in rude encounters with strangers. In short, chapter three has the ability to make the reader more aware of his or her surroundings and behaviour in a positive way.
Incivility is a fascinating book filled with interesting trends and themes not typically considered by social scientists. Yet, this particular research is paramount if we are to understand incivility in everyday encounters. The interdisciplinary focus to incivility provides a unique way of understanding social encounters and demystifies incivility as being a predominantly criminological phenomenon. Incivility is fervently recommended to anyone interested in sociological and psychological issues underlying behaviour, coping and self-management, criminologists, and those interested in how urban settings affect behaviour, or anyone who has ever been the victim, or perpetrator, of a rude encounter.